The Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation has released an English-language summary of A Future for Our Digital Memory: Permanent Access to Information in the Netherlands.
Here's an excerpt:
In order to underpin its strategy, the NCDD decided to first build a detailed picture of the current situation in the public sector in the Netherlands. Can institutions or domains be identified which have successfully risen to the challenge of digital preservation and permanent access? Which categories of data are in danger of being lost? How can the risks be managed? This so-called National Digital Preservation Survey was funded by the Ministry of Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
After some preliminary consultancy work it was decided that the survey would best be carried out by researchers with both knowledge of the issues involved in digital preservation and of the three sectors, which were identified as: scholarly communications, government & archives, and culture & heritage. A team of three researchers was recruited from among NCDD member staff, with the NCDD coordinator leading the project. The initial objective, to conduct a statistically relevant quantitative survey, had to be abandoned early in the project. The field to be surveyed was vast and varied, and some of the target groups were quite unfamiliar with the specifics of digital preservation, making online surveys unproductive. Therefore, the research team decided on a methodology of (some seventy) semi-structured interviews with knowledgeable stakeholders, adding relevant information from both Dutch and foreign published sources. Five interviews were held with major private sector parties to establish whether the private sector has best practices to offer for the public sector to emulate.
